A blog of my seasonal and everyday thoughts on life and pagan spirituality

Time: The Pagan Experience

Prompt questions: How do you measure time? How do you make use of linear time in sacred space? How do you call forth the space of timelessness in your physical life? How do you integrate the two for your magickal/spiritual work?

The call to pagan spirituality begins with an awareness of the earth. For me, that took the form of recognition of the seasons. The seasons continue to be my greatest inspiration in both creative and spiritual aspects of my life.

In a way, I think the seasons remind us to celebrate time, rather than just letting it pass. We are called to have an intimate connection with the moment.

My fiance and I recently had a fascinating conversation about time. We were talking about whether there might be a possibility of traveling through time the way we travel through space. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity this hasn’t yet been possible because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But might we not one day be able to travel through time? Jay pointed out that if humans develop an ability to travel through time at some point in the future, then someone might have come back from the future to tell us. Perhaps! This brings up all sorts of interesting questions about the linearity of time.

Have you ever dreamed something, and then that something has happened in the physical plane (everyday reality)? What about the feeling of deja vu? Science has not yet been able to explain these occurrences, and yet people experience them. I personally have dreamed of things that were yet to happen- not frequently, but it’s happened a couple of times. To me this says there are things about the nature of time science has not yet been able to explain.

Yesterday we discussed dreamwork in the Firefly Wicca 3 class. We talked about how in some traditions, dreamwork is considered the foundation of spiritual progress. It seems we’re able to walk in other realms and to make connections our mind can’t normally make in our dreams. To me it makes sense that dreams would be able to show us different places in time. It seems natural that dreams can play a strong role in magickal and spiritual work, and it’s something I’d like to build on in my own practice.

As time moves forward, and as we experience the cycles of the seasons, of the waxing and waning of the moon, of birth, life and death, it seems to me the greatest spiritual challenge is to find the constant in all of that. The part of yourself that is the divine, the spark, that does not change no matter how time moves and what it brings. To uncover that eternal part of the self, and then to see the divine spirit in all things.